


A Long Way Till Tomorrow, and We’re Still Burning Today

by Ill_Ratte



Category: Detroit Evolution - Fandom, Detroit: Become Human (Video Game), octopunk media - Fandom
Genre: Bonding, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Mentions of past transphobia, Trans Gavin Reed, Trans Lazzo Fratello, lots of talking, of sorts, some fluff but it is minor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-30
Updated: 2020-06-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24990475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ill_Ratte/pseuds/Ill_Ratte
Summary: Lazzo doesn’t know what to expect when Gavin pulls up besides him. Perhaps another round of arrests, or the same smug jackass who first busted him. Not a helping hand.
Relationships: Gavin Reed & Lazzo Fratello
Comments: 5
Kudos: 63





	A Long Way Till Tomorrow, and We’re Still Burning Today

**Author's Note:**

> Eyy prolly only me and like a few other ppl will like this so please leave a comment if you’re one of them <3 it’s based on DE btw

“I thought I’d find you here.” The detective’s voice rang out like a shot in the darkness. Lazzo froze, ice spreading from his locked legs to his heart like he’d been hit. 

“You know, most men who’re looking for me just call.” He said, wiggling his eyebrows for emphasis. Meanwhile, his eyes scraped the ground for any escape. 

Detective Gavin Reed drew closer. He was a good six inches shorter than Lazzo, though only when Lazzo was standing. Sitting on the wall was only a partial advantage. Lazzo considered sweeping his legs, but he knew his chances were nil; any wrong move and Reed would sic his android puppy on his ass. Instead, he regarded the Detective coolly. 

As if he was a mind reader, Reed said “Nines isn’t with me, you know. It’s just us. So you can relax.” He hoisted himself up on the wall, sitting down besides him just a few feet apart. Lazzo scooted away. 

“Can I? So it’s easier to slap the cuffs on me, right officer?” 

“I didn’t say anything about taking you in.” His breath puffed from him in a burst of white smoke, dying in the air in front of him. His legs dangled limply over the edge of the stone wall. 

“So you’re not trying to catch me trespassing?” Lazzo dragged his legs to his chest, firmly securing his arms around them. His toes jutted just out over the edge of the wall, and his eyes searched where inky cast shadows finally met pavement.

“Are you planning on it? I mean, we’re not on Cyberlife property yet. Out here is open to the public.” Reed patted the wall firmly. “Of course, only an idiot would trespass there, right?” 

Lazzo kept his mouth shut. 

“It’s a long way down, you know. And once you hit the bottom… bzzt.” 

A memory, the flash of bright lights and reeking, smoking flesh, rose in Lazzo’s mind. He swallowed down bile. “He wasn’t an idiot.” 

“Just unlucky, right?” 

Lazzo expected him to look glib. To have the kind of face that would make whatever consequences came from punching him worth it. Instead, Detective Gavin Reed looked like he understood. Lazzo hated him all the more for it. 

“You’re not gonna be lucky every time, kid. And it only-“

“Don’t call me that.”

“Kid?” Gavin raised an eyebrow. 

“I’m not a child.” 

Gavin’s lips thinned into a smile. “Sure. But as I was saying, you’re not going to be lucky every time, Lazzo.”

“You don’t know that.” Lazzo’s toes slid more over the edge, and he let his legs dangle off in defeat. 

“Sure I don’t.” When Lazzo looked back up, Gavin tapped the bridge of his nose. An ugly red scar ran across it. “I mean, I wasn’t lucky.”

“What, get it in a bar fight or something, old man? Or did an old lady hit you with her walker after you wrote her a bad parking ticket?” He snickered at his own joke. To his annoyance, Gavin remained unfazed. He still had the same semi somber, semi knowing look on his face. It reminded Lazzo of the one his dad used to use while lecturing him. 

“I ran away when I was sixteen years old.”

“And let me guess, you regretted it ever since.” Lazzo had heard the story a thousand times over from every well meaning youth pastor and “crisis counselor” and the some. He didn’t need to be belittled. 

“Fuck no. My only regret was not getting rid of my parents on the way out.” Gavin grinned, and for a second Lazzo thought he looked like a wolf. The moment passed, and Gavin resumed his story. “Look, I was on the streets after that. I had people who cared about me. My friends, my English Teacher, shit, even the people at the YMCA were better than what I fell into. Running away was the right choice, but what I did after…” 

Gavin swallowed hard. It looked like it actually pained him to talk. Lazzo hated him even more. “When I was sixteen, I thought being a man meant taking care of myself, by myself. I thought it meant fighting for myself, working for myself, not taking any handouts from anyone. I didn’t think I needed anyone to help me, shit, I didn’t know that anyone could help me, until it was almost too late. I got this” his thumb jerked back to tap his nose again, “the night I wised up. With someone else’s help, of course. Some of my friends weren’t that lucky.” 

“So you think I’m just a poor teenage runaway?” 

“Well, not now, no. But maybe you used to be. Or you could have any backstory. The how isn’t that important, right?” Gavin slid his hand closer, almost subconsciously. It sat between them on the slick brick top of the wall. 

“I didn’t run away.” Lazzo’s mom and dad had made it perfectly clear he wasn’t welcome home if he was going to dress ‘like that’. It had been a tearful goodbye on his mother’s part when she had realized that Lazzo held his self  
more import to him than their wishes. 

“Alright.” 

“And it’s not like there’s work for a guy like me out there, anyways.” There wasn’t anything for someone like him out there. 

“Don't say that. There’s plenty of entry level shit you can try; you just have to be willing to put the effort in.” The fucking Dad Look was back on Gavin’s face. Lazzo really wanted to punch him. 

“I don’t mean that- you wouldn’t understand.” He had held one ‘real’ job before all this; it had lasted two weeks, half filled with complaints to HR, before he had been let go for “not fitting into the company culture”. 

Gavin had a funny little smirk on his face. “Wouldn’t I?” He pulled down the corner of his shirt. Right across his collarbone, in thick, jagged ink barely visible save for the help of the moonlight, was a circle with three symbols sticking out of it. Female, Male, and one transitioning between the two. 

Lazzo didn’t know what to say. Gavin’s smirk told him that he knew he was right. 

“So you’re flashing me now?” Lazzo said dryly. 

Gavin ignored the comment. 

“And the trans symbol? Really? Isn’t that stereotypical? Personally, I prefer the much more tasteful transgender tattooed across my ass.” 

“It was the 20s, give me a break. And besides, who’s to say I don’t have that too?” 

Lazzo tried to block out the image. 

Gavin settled back. “Trust me, I know it’s not easy. But there are people out there who can help you. Who care about you. You don’t have to end up like that.” Gavin’s chin jutted out to the barren expanse of Cyberlife property. 

They sat in silence for a moment that lasted a lifetime. Lazzo’s arms had crept back around himself, cradling him from the cold. Finally, when Lazzo had grown stiff from waiting, Gavin stood. 

“Are you going to take me in?” He asked. He would have held his hands up ready to be handcuffed mockingly, but he was both too stiff and too somber to follow through. 

“You haven’t done anything. Not yet.” 

Before Lazzo could say anything else, Gavin took off his jacket, wrapping it around his shoulders and tucking it around his torso like a blanket. 

“Hey!” 

Gavin stood back up. One hand ruffled his hair, so quick Lazzo swore he had imagined it. “You need it more than me.” 

“But how do I-“ 

Gavin was already gone. As Lazzo watched the car pull away, his legs now dangling off the other side of the wall and nearly touching grass, his hand searched in the coat pocket. 

It came back with a crumbled up square of paper. On the back, in tightly scrawled letters read “145 Vitton Street, 5:30 pm tomorrow. You can return the jacket then.” 

Lazzo laughed. It was the fucking youth in crisis center. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to go, even if to give the overly annoying detective his jacket back. He stood up, jumping down from the wall, and tugged the jacket closer to him. It was a long way till tomorrow, and he might as well get some use out of it.


End file.
